The un-fun stuff - wedding finances! 18 August 2014 at 1:47PM in Weddings & anniversaries 9 replies 1.5K views

CRO9

Hi there, my other half and I (sorry I can't bear the word fianc!!) have booked a venue for 2016. Seems like a life time away but I'm sure it will come round quick! I'm just looking for advice about 1) wedding insurance - any tips on who to go with or how much roughly that will cost? 2) We have set our budget and so saving begins! We each want to put money away per month until the big day finally arrives. Any advice on the best bank/account to go with? Is anywhere doing a worthwhile promotion at the moment? Thanks very much in advance!

arbrighton

our insurance is John Lewis, about 80 quid and required to give the public liability insurance required by venue. Can't help with accounts I'm afraid

nearlyrich

There are a few accounts which offer a decent return on a regular saver if you have the current account with them, First Direct for instance has a regular saver over a year you may be able to benefit twice depending on when in 2016 you are planning to marry. Great idea to get wedding insurance before you do anything else.

redfragglebiker

No advice on the account but I second the John Lewis wddding insurance. My OH (being the adorkable geek that he is) set up a spreadsheet with costs of everything we wanted to do and then a seperate page for how much our savings would total month on month. Through some formulaic wizardry if we mark something as paid on the costing spreadsheet it deducts the balance from our savings spreadsheet so we can always see at a glance what we have and what we need to pay for still.

It should be possible to do something similar even if you're not that great with spreadsheets. You might just have to manually add up a few colums but it;s really useful in terms of having a list of stuff you need to sort, how much it's going to cost and what you've already paid for.

kayl

If you are on Quidco, worth checking them out, as I got a policy though them which was only about £25, and had cashback too

minerva_windsong

We got our wedding insurance through Debenhams after a recommendation from a family member. £20 cashback through TopCashBack and £10 voucher too. Thankfully haven't needed it (yet!) but service has been excellent.


No help on the bank account though I'm afraid.

jim_

We decided not to go with insurance, though it was almost an entirely DIY wedding and the risk of suppliers/venues going bust and taking our money was low - our venue was solid and our only external suppliers were hogroast (£50 deposit) and photographer (no deposit). We reasoned we could afford to write off the £50 if necessary as it would be cheaper than the insurance + excess!

We only had 9 months to plan so couldn't make use of decent 1 year locked in accounts but I still had a reasonably high interest ISA so we put our savings (£100 each per month) into that. Total interest negligible but better than nothing.

Best advice? Spreadsheets for everything. Wonderful things. We didn't have an expensive wedding (still managed 100 people, two meals, live music, DJ, bouncy castle, honeymoon and rings for £2k) but it was helpful to track all the funds going in and out!

snow_ball

We're just using a low rate savings account, not far enough in advance for any decent rates. Check out the comparison sites to see what would suit you.

We also took out Debenhams insurance.

I cannot recommend spreadsheets enough though, I track our savings and outgoings (not to mention every item of the wedding that needs sorting) regularly and it keeps me sane!

guardiangirl

I literally just opened my savings account in about 2 minutes online at Halifax. It was easy and avaialble instantly. OK interest is probably not the best but you can dip in and out as many times as you like.

lazer

Open 2 TSB current account at 5% interest up to £2,000 in each - need to transfer £500 between the accounts each month.